What Happened on Fox Street

Mercedes collapsed into a sneezing fit. She yanked open the door and flung the dusty cloth out. “This is bonkerdom! I’m allergic to this whole house. Aaaa-choo!”

Another soap bubble rose in the sunlight. Mo wheeled away from the sink. “Come on, rock paper scissors-loser gets the bathroom.”

In reply, Mercedes draped her lengthy self over a chair. She looked worn out, though they’d barely gotten started.

“We have a stellar cleaning lady. Monette and Corny and me.”

“For real?”

“She cleans my room. I never have to do anything except put my clothes in the wash.”

“Wow.” Mo peeled away her sticky T-shirt and blew down her sweaty front. “I could get used to that.”

Mercedes sat up, looking encouraged. “You know what I’m thinking? Next summer you’ll come stay with me. I’ve got an extra bed in my room, just for sleepovers. With a lame pink princess canopy, but still. I’ll take you to a park you’ll love. It’s colossal, acres and acres, with a pond and cool little paddle- boats.”

“Wow. It sounds like a plan. I visit down there for a few days, then we come up here for the rest of the summer. I like it!”

Mercedes leaned back, legs and arms flopping as if she’d been deboned.

“Did I mention the juicer? Three-C makes these concoctions from fresh mango and pineapple, and I have to admit they’re almost supernatural. Oh, yeah, and the TV’s down in the family room, about half a mile from their bedroom. We can stay up all night, no problem.”

“Wow,” said Mo, stuck on REPLAY. “You make it sound like paradise. I mean, real paradise, not Paradise Avenue.”

“It’s different from here, Mo.”

“Rock scissors paper.” Mo tucked her fingers behind her back. “We don’t want His Royal Pain in the Butt to have a nervous breakdown when he sees this place.”

Mercedes’s spine melted. “Mo, I’ve got something to say.”

“Okay.”

“We’ve been friends for all of our formative years. We are sisters in some parallel universe. No one else knows that I used to be terrified of bridges.”

“You still are.”

“See? And I know you secretly like Pi Baggott, even though you’d never admit it even to me.”

“I need someone for a friend when you’re not around.” Mo’s cheeks grew toasty. “That’s all.”

“So that’s why I’m going to tell you this. I’ve been trying to tell you all summer, but you haven’t exactly been receptive.”

Mo braced herself against the sink. It was so quiet in the kitchen, she could hear the soap bubbles popping one by one.

“Suppose-” Mercedes poked her finger at her bottom lip. “Suppose the planet stops spinning, and Da’s brain gets taken over by aliens, or more likely by my mother and stepfather. Suppose she agrees to move downstate with us-wait! Don’t say anything yet! Let me finish.”

Pop pop pop. It was amazing, how deafening the sound of a bubble popping could be.

“That might not be the complete and utter disaster you think.” Mercedes began to lift her chin, but an invisible weight tugged it back down. “Because…because I might really need her. As my ally. In case. They decide to, you know. Procreate.”

Mo was stunned. Never once in all her extensive thinking had she considered this possibility.

“They haven’t said it, not in actual words! But a blind man could see. They’re in love, Mo! They dance in the kitchen. They kiss any time, any place. She’ll be sitting at the computer and he-”

“Okay, okay, I get the idea.”

“It’s just a matter of time! That might even be what Monette’s coming here to tell me. Oh, they’ll pretend I’m part of the big decision, but it won’t really matter what I say or feel. Irrationality’s going to win out. And then?” Mercedes flung her hands over her eyes. “Life as I know it will come to an end.”

“You might be exaggerating. Being a big sister isn’t all that bad.”

Mercedes lowered her hands and stared. “I’ve witnessed with my own eyes what you go through. The torture, the unrelenting hardship! Dottie gets away with everything, while you’re expected to be responsible and mature no matter what. Fairness is a meaningless word, once you have a little brother or sister. Not to mention you have to share, and I hate to share.”

Mercedes’s arms and legs wove themselves into a knot. She pressed her forehead to her knee. When she spoke again, it was to the very center of her golden self.

“Not to mention. It’ll have a father.”

Mo racked her brain but could think of no way to deny that.

“That won’t be fair,” Mercedes said. “Right from the start, things won’t be fair.”

Mo turned back to the sink, where the water had gone cold and murky and every last bubble had popped.

“If I had Da living with me, it’d be different. Da’s mine, you know? And we’d be together, twenty-four seven. We wouldn’t have to be separated half the year, the way we are now. Families are supposed to stick together-let me see, what famous person said that? Shakespeare?” Mercedes raised her head. She cocked it in that infuriating way of hers. “Oh, wait, I know: Maureen Jewel Wren!”

Mo ran a finger around the vegetable drawer, so clean now it squeaked. She dried it with a towel, then slid it back inside the refrigerator.

“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Mercedes demanded.

“What can I say? You already have it all figured out.”

“You’re mad at me.” Mercedes undid her body knot and sat up very straight. “I knew you’d be mad.”

“Please don’t tell me what I am, thank you very much.”

“I knew it,” repeated Mo’s once-best friend. “You can’t stand things changing! You know what that makes you? It makes you a…a dictator! You want to be in charge of the whole world! Bossing every last person around, telling them how things are supposed to be, thank you very much. No one else’s opinions or needs will be taken into account, sorry about that.”

“Oh, yeah? That’s what you think. You don’t know everything about me, Mercedes Jasmine Walcott! Just because you wear better clothes than me and have a maid and all of a sudden you think Fox Street is the armpit of the world-”

“I never said that and you know it!”

“You’ve been faking all summer, pretending you were on my side!”

“I wasn’t faking! I am on your side! It’s…it’s complicated, that’s all. It’s not black and white! Why can’t you see that? What’s the matter with you?”

“Me? I’m not the one who changed! I’m no traitor!”

“Consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds!”

“Who you calling a hobgoblin, you Benedict Arnold?”

A stricken look stole over Mercedes’s face. Mo followed her gaze upward, along the length of her own arm, all the way to her hand, which clutched one of Da’s good glasses. Which, it appeared, she was preparing to hurl across the room.

Mo lowered her arm. Even as she set the glass back on the counter, she could hear the sound it would make when it smashed. She could feel the thrilling, sickening electric jolt of it.

“I’m leaving,” she said.

“Good idea.”

“Better call your cleaning lady to finish up here.”

Mercedes didn’t say another word as Mo swept out the door.

That night she lay awake brooding, face toward her window. The sky shuddered with heat lightning. Even the sky was making false promises now. Heat lightning was nothing but bluster and brag, never delivering the sweet gift every blade of grass longed for, every dusty bird dreamed of.